This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Public School Misconceptions, and other rants…

Should our Public Schools use Standardized Testing? Do these Tests accurately gauge if our children have been "educated"?

pragmatist - a person who takes a practical
approach to a problem and is concerned primarily with the success or failure of
actions taken to solve said problem.

I chose the moniker The Frustrated Pragmatist in direct response to what I see as an increasing dependence of rhetoric, and emotionally charged catch phrases in the media today.  All designed to elicit a specific response to any given topic, but also to try to divide complex issues in to an either/or argument, where in actuality, no such either/or choice is required at all.

This past weekend, I read a very emotionally charged opinion piece in the Post-Gazette regarding how we need a grass roots effort to opt our school children out of taking the PSSA Exams, or by extension, the new Keystone Exams, and perhaps even SAT’s or ACT’s.  That is my extrapolation, the author of the letter did not carry the logical argument out that far.  Strangely enough, the argument
seemed to start off with how the PSSA Exams are both physically and emotionally
damaging to our children, and then seemed to float in to a general rant about
Public School performance and how we measure such performance.

Find out what's happening in Plum-Oakmontwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Are our Public Schools achieving the goal set forth for them?  I suppose that depends on what you think the goal is that they are attempting to achieve? 
“Educate our children”.  There, that was easy!  I think we can all agree
that is not an acceptable answer under any logical criteria.  “Prepare our children for College”.  Hmmm…that was pretty easy too, but also lacking in any logical reality when you consider not all children are, or should be going to college.  “Teach our children to think”.  I used to hear that a lot from parents with regards to college level education, but not much when talking about K-12 education.  At the college level, this sort of attitude has led to a large crop of graduates with
degrees in Middle East Dietary Comparative Studies, or (insert your favorite
degree here) that just don’t seem to have any practical use in today’s society.

I suppose when all else fails, we need to go to the source Data.  If you go to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) website, you can find the Common Core Standards for all academic curricula in PA.  All schools in PA are supposed
to be implementing curricula that will teach our children the Common Core
Standards in all areas.  If you are really ambitious, you can download and read in infinite details, the specific skills and abilities that are to be learned by grade level for all of the areas as well.  I have read the Common Core Standards.  I understand the Common Core Standards.  And, at the heart of the matter,
I agree that the skills and abilities required under the Standards are the
minimal I would expect my children to be taught in our Public Schools.

Find out what's happening in Plum-Oakmontwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

So, having accepted the Standards as a good thing, the fun really begins.  I doubt there are many readers who would dispute the data indicating that our children have fallen behind the rest of the world in performance at basic math and science skills.  If you truly doubt that fact please save your debate for another article.  Remember, I am the pragmatist.  I accept that the data shows this to be fact, and am more concerned with solving the problem than debating if the problem really exists.  It does exist. Back to the fun…

How do we as parents know if our kids are learning up to the level of the Standards?  How do we know if our curricula in our local Public School meets the requirements of the Standards?  How do we know if our Teachers in our Public
School is capable of teaching to the Standards?  These are the real questions.  This is where the teeth gnashing, emotional outbursts, and general
ranting all begin!

The first question seems fairly simple at first blush. Are our kids learning?  Give them a standardized test based on the requirements of the Common Core Standards.  If they pass the test, they learned the Standards.  If they don’t pass, they did not learn them.  And of course there are plenty of shades of grey in between pass and fail that can be debated ad nausea.  However, at some point, all of us pragmatic parents need to be confident that our kids are being taught what they are supposed to be taught!  A Standardized Test is one tool that can be legitimately used to gauge success.  Of course, course grades, class tests, and
performance in the classroom have to be considered when we grade our kids.  But, at some point we need to make a determination as to whether or not a student has learned enough to say that our Public School has met its mandate to teach our children.  Is there a better tool than a Standardized Test to determine this?  Well, I am certainly open to suggestions.  However, those suggestions had better have some robust data to back them up.  We are not performing spectacularly (especially in the math and sciences), and suggestions that are not robust in data, supporting real world proof of education in the Standards, are not getting us any closer to the goal.  But, if there is some other way to determine if a student has mastered the Common Core Standards, I am all ears.

School curricula, and its relationship to the Common Core Standards is a very complex issue.  It is also currently evolving since the Standards are relatively new.  Local schools through their administrators and directors are responsible for ensuring that the curricula is in line with the Common Core Standards.  Period. 
That is a mandate, and in my opinion, a good one.  If a parent wants to learn how well his district is doing with this effort, you need to get involved rather heavily with the school board.  All curriculum decisions are made in the public forum of the school board meeting.  All text books are reviewed publically to ensure they are in line with the requirements of the Common Core Standards.  This takes effort on the part of parents, and may not be high on their priority list.

The last question I posed is definitely the most volatile of them all.  Are the teachers in your district able to teach a new curriculum in line with the Common Core Standards?  My heart wants to unequivocally state “YES”.  I want to believe that all of our teachers are dedicated to the best results for our children, and will do whatever it takes to improve the outcomes of their teaching efforts. Unfortunately, the pragmatist inside me kidnaps my brain, and starts to put doubts in my mind.  Are some of the older teachers flexible enough to change the way they have been teaching forever?  Do all of the teachers have the educational
background to teach all of the material required under the Standards?  Do all of the teachers have the desire to improve teaching?  You can probably come
up with other doubts of your own.  Again, this is an issue between parents and the school board.  This one gets MUCH more complicated when we include the Teacher’s Union, and the new requirements for Teacher Evaluations being implemented by the PDE and your local school.  However, these are YOUR schools, and YOUR kids.  Parental involvement and understanding of how children are being taught, and by whom is a minimum requirement of the parents.  Very
difficult, very time consuming, and fraught with gigantic emotional responses
if one actually attempts to discuss the effectiveness of any given individual
teacher.  Land mines!  Fireworks!

So, that is the end of my rant about Standardized Testing.  We seem to believe we need a Common Core Standard to govern what our children are supposed to be taught.  We just can’t seem to get a grip on how to determine if it is actually happening.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?